--- title: "From Silos to Service Topology: Why Netflix Built a Real-Time Service Map" url: https://daily.dev/posts/from-silos-to-service-topology-why-netflix-built-a-real-time-service-map-rlefmifnv source_url: https://netflixtechblog.com/from-silos-to-service-topology-why-netflix-built-a-real-time-service-map-0165ba13a7bc type: article source: "Netflix TechBlog" published: 2026-05-29T19:12:26.685Z updated: 2026-05-29T19:12:51.215Z tags: ["linux", "architecture", "observability", "distributed-systems", "service-mesh"] reading_time: 15 upvotes: 20 comments: 2 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # From Silos to Service Topology: Why Netflix Built a Real-Time Service Map **[Netflix TechBlog](https://daily.dev/sources/netflix)** · 15 min read · 20 upvotes · 2 comments ## Summary Netflix built a real-time service topology map called Service Topology to help engineers understand microservice dependencies at scale. The system combines three complementary data sources: eBPF network flows for comprehensive coverage, IPC metrics for application-level endpoint details, and distributed tracing for actual request paths. Each source creates a separate graph stored in Netflix's custom graph database, which can be queried independently or merged into a unified view with sub-second response times. The architecture uses Kafka ingestion, Apache Pekko Streams for distributed processing, and a three-stage aggregation pipeline to resolve network intermediaries and reconstruct true app-to-app connections. Engineers can visualize dependencies, assess blast radius, overlay health status, query programmatically via gRPC, and even time-travel through historical topology states. Future plans include change event overlays and automated root cause analysis powered by the topology graph. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How Netflix Maps Thousands of Microservices in Real-Time](https://daily.dev/posts/how-netflix-maps-thousands-of-microservices-in-real-time-btv6gxgki) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How Netflix Scaled Its Real-Time Service Map](https://daily.dev/posts/how-netflix-scaled-its-real-time-service-map-u7xt8lptw) · InfoQ · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Building Service Topology at Scale: Architecture, Challenges, and Lessons Learned](https://daily.dev/posts/building-service-topology-at-scale-architecture-challenges-and-lessons-learned-qptwmjvf7) · Netflix TechBlog · 26 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems), [#service-mesh](https://daily.dev/tags/service-mesh) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/from-silos-to-service-topology-why-netflix-built-a-real-time-service-map-rlefmifnv)